RoR: Forum

I went with the assassins being culpable murders. It was a tough one though. Not having the full historical data, I decided based on the stated premise that the action might be justified on the basis of it being legally sanctioned by the state. Legal sanction does not make something right. More data might (and probably would) convince me that this particular assassination was justified, but I still wouldn't judge based on the state's sanction.
(Edited by Ryan Keith Roper on 5/15, 4:46am)

Post 1

Friday, May 15, 2009 - 5:26am

They were right, by the terms of the Republic, to be rid of him - but the viability of the Republic was essentially dead, and if he hadn't 'crossed the Rubicon', someone else would [and in essence, did]...

Post 2

Friday, May 15, 2009 - 6:23am

And besides which, all the forensic evidence has been lost...

: )

Post 3

Friday, May 15, 2009 - 12:33pm

I went with the assassins being blameless, since the linked Wikipedia article shows Caesar essentially ending the Roman Republic and installing a dictatorship. If someone takes away your liberty like that, you have the right to fight back and try to regain your freedom.

Not that it did any good, and if Wikipedia is to be believed, arguably made things worse -- most of the public no longer supported the notion of a Republic, and so the assassination just resulted in a string of mostly tyrannical rulers.

Post 4

Friday, May 15, 2009 - 12:45pm

Re this: "Not having the full historical data, I decided based on the stated premise that the action might be justified on the basis of it being legally sanctioned by the state."

So, if the state doesn't sanction the assassination of tyrants (and unsurprisingly enough, the more despotic the ruler(s), the less likely they are to condone people trying to kill them), then killing a dictator makes you a "culpable murderer"?

Not buying that argument. If someone in Zimbabwe or North Korea managed to take out the tyrants oppressing them, I wouldn't consider them "culpable murderers".

Post 5

Friday, May 15, 2009 - 2:01pm

No, if the state sanctions a killing, that doesn't automatically make it right. That is the only context given in the question. The state says it's ok to kill a person. Are people blameless if they do so? My answer was "Not on the sole basis of the state's sanction". I stand by that answer for the context given. I specifically stated that further data would likely indicate the killing was moral, but that wasn't the question. Please don't invert my argument. "State sanction doesn't make assassination moral in itself" is not "Assassination without state sanction is immoral".

Post 6

Friday, May 15, 2009 - 3:10pm

I went with the assassins being blameless, since the linked Wikipedia article shows Caesar essentially ending the Roman Republic and installing a dictatorship. If someone takes away your liberty like that, you have the right to fight back and try to regain your freedom.

Not that it did any good, and if Wikipedia is to be believed, arguably made things worse -- most of the public no longer supported the notion of a Republic

No they didn't support it, and for good reason. The Senate had itself turned into a tyranny long before Caesar assumed power. Roman soldiers returning home from war campaigns would usually find their farmland confiscated by Roman elites, actions that were supported by the oligarchic Senate. The Gracci brothers tried to bring reform by introducing legislation in the Senate, but the Senate executed them. The Senate just became a bunch of vultures, plundering the people of Rome and confiscating their wealth. The Consuls of Marius and Sulla erupted into a civil war over the Gracci reforms. Marius supported them, Sulla didn't, and when Sulla had capture Rome in that war, he killed all of his political opponents in the Senate and installed Senators of his own choosing.

So we're not talking about some kind of free society. In the beginning the Roman Republic was good, but by the end, it had basically just fallen apart and imploded on itself.

Post 7

Saturday, May 16, 2009 - 3:51am

I did not vote, as I found the question poorly framed. The discussion so far underscores the disconnect between ancient times and modern. I point specifically to the grossly incorrect and embarrassingly illiterate use of the words "dictator" and "tyrant." In our modern context the words have meanings different -- perhaps opposed -- to the ancient ideas.

Under Roman law, a dictator was appointed to rule in place of the two consuls. A dictator ruled through a crisis. Typically for six months as that was about as long as a military campaign lasted. (March is the month of Mars because once the seeds were in the ground, farmers were available to fight -- and they would need to be home for the harvests.) Sulla was appointed dictator for life ahead of Caesar's appointment. Whatever the failings, the matter was legal under Roman law.

A tyrant was a self-made man on the rise in late archaic Greece. (By "Greece" we need to understand not Hellas but Helliades: everything from the Crimea to Spain and mostly in Ionia, the western coast of Turkey, with what we think of as "Greece" as being only a forested, landed place where a lot of other Greeks also lived.) As philosophy replaced religion, as merchants replaced farmers, as coins replaced cows, tyrants were successful businessmen who were given economic management of the town. And this "replacement" was not physical -- the farmers did not go away; and many "merchants" also owned farms -- but political: the man who carried his wealth in coins had the same social influence (or more) as the man who herded cows.

There are many other aspects to this that are being glossed over. The Roman Senate was but one of several legislatures as is the US Senate. The broadly felt admiration for the Roman Republic comes as much from the prejudices of academics as from an objective appreciation for social virtues. We prefer plain, hardworking, simple farmers and distrust city merchants living sumptuously -- but why?

Post 8

Monday, May 18, 2009 - 5:50pm

A good one, MEM.

I only recently read about what a tyrant meant in ancient Greece. Though by the time of the Romans, did tyranny already gain the meaning as we understand it now? No?

Post 9

Monday, May 18, 2009 - 8:00pm